Did the beliefs of the Brotherhood and the college promote the themes ofthe blindness of society and the invisibility of the narrator?
... Washington. Students at the college are taught to work hard and learn trades, while not demanding equal rights or treatment from whites. The college actually encourages students to reject their own culture and adopt the manners and speech of whites. This idea of rejecting the black culture forces the narrator to accept his inferiority to whites and promotes society’s blindness and his own invisibility. Dr. Bledsoe ultimately betrays the narrator and the college students by posing as a figure of African American success through study and education when, in fact, he lowers himself to whites and tells the narrator “…I‘ll have every Negro in the country hanging on tree limbs by morning if it means staying where I am” (p. 141). The Brotherhood’s belief was that people who were lower on the social “ladder” (African Americans) should surrender to the inevitable struggle between them and whites. Through this philosophy, the Brotherhood shows no concern for the narrator’s thoughts or emotions. When the narrator first joins the Brotherhood, he thinks that they will assist him in the fight for racial equality but soon realizes that the Brotherhood merely used and betrayed him. Brother Jack greatly betrays the narrator when he pretends to be his friend while inside he is racist and prejudice...